Last night’s debate between the three main political parties went very much as I expected. David Cameron had the most to lose as expectations of him to win the debate easily were very high and were never going to be met once Clegg was allowed to debate and another opposition leader was able to attack Brown and present an alternative set of policies. There wasn’t much expected of Brown so the only direction he could have gone is up which he only just did and Clegg was always going to gain the most as he could more or less say whatever he wanted knowing he will never be PM and could use the ‘same old party’ attack against both Labour and Conservatives and portray himself as the radical third way.

In the end all three candidates stuck to their policy lines with Nick Clegg looking most assertive and on most polls winning the debate. Now the Clegg novelty factor has worn off it will be interesting to see how he does in the other two debates especially as expectations will be high for him to repeat his performance of last night.

Labour launched its manifesto today and one thing that stood out on a skim read of the education section is this:

Frontline spending on Sure Start, childcare, schools and 16-19 learning will be increased, safeguarding our priorities such as an additional 41,000 teachers and 120,000 teaching assistants. But funding will not rise as fast as in recent years, making tough choices necessary to focus resources on the front line, with £950m saved through collaboration and efficiency in back office functions and procurement and £500m from quangos and central budgets. (Chapter 3:2)

At the drop of a hat Labour will find savings of £1.45 billion from its Education budget including from quangos! Since at least 2005 when the Tories argued that a large amount of taxpayers money was being wasted in Education, Labour has replied that this was simply untrue and accused the Tories of wanting to cut frontline services – but today cutting that waste has become so important that it has found its way into Labour’s manifesto and amazingly and unsurprisingly this will be done while ‘safeguarding’ frontline services. Hypocrisy of the worst kind!